


The Crypt

by tinydooms



Series: We Three Together [14]
Category: The Mummy (1999), The Mummy Series
Genre: Archaeology, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Human Sacrifice, Mummies, action adventure, heroic self sacrifice, misadventures with artifacts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-10
Updated: 2020-09-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:53:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26396713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tinydooms/pseuds/tinydooms
Summary: They entered the City of the Dead though a crevasse in the rocks that Ardeth Bey led them to at the back of Hamunaptra--apparently the Medjai knew more about the interior of the lost city than they let on. Rick pulled a couple of torches from his bag and handed one to Jonathan.“If you see anything, hit it hard and fast,” he said and the other man nodded.
Relationships: Evy Carnahan O'Connell/Rick O'Connell
Series: We Three Together [14]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1714483
Comments: 14
Kudos: 67





	The Crypt

**The Crypt**

_ Hamunaptra, October 1922 _

They entered the City of the Dead though a crevasse in the rocks that Ardeth Bey led them to at the back of Hamunaptra--apparently the Medjai knew more about the interior of the lost city than they let on. Rick pulled a couple of torches from his bag and handed one to Jonathan. 

“If you see anything, hit it hard and fast,” he said and the other man nodded. 

A second torch went to Ardeth Bey, who led them on swift, stealthy feet through the maze of sand- and rubble-strewn corridors. Rick brought up the rear, one pistol cocked and ready. All was silent; they may well have been alone in that dank underground place. They walked for what seemed like a long time, eventually passing the stairway that the Americans had found on the original Carnahan Expedition, and the map in Rick’s mind oriented itself. 

“Where’ll he have taken her?”

“To the funerary temple complex,” Ardeth Bey replied. “Only there can he complete the ritual.”

“And how much time to do you think we have?”

Ardeth Bey hesitated and Rick and Jonathan glanced at each other. Without speaking, they picked up their pace. Anxiety gnawed at Rick. Somewhere in this nightmare place was Evelyn. He just hoped that she was giving her captors hell.

At length they came to a doorway partially blocked with loose stones. 

“We did this, in my grandfather’s youth,” Ardeth Bey said, planting his torch in the sand. “We hoped it would deter tomb robbers and force them to take the more dangerous route.”

“So this is a shortcut, then?” asked Jonathan. 

“Yes. It leads through Seti’s treasure chamber and down into the temple.”

“When you say ‘treasure chamber’--” Jonathan began, an Egyptological glint coming into his eyes.

“Save it,” Rick said, stowing his own torch in a niche in the wall and turning his hands to the stones. “It can wait.”

“Quite,” said Jonathan. 

For a while they scrambled to pull the stones out to create a large enough hole to climb through. The doorway was narrow, only wide enough for O’Connell and Ardeth Bey to stand abreast, tugging stones down and casting them aside. Jonathan stood to one side, holding his torch aloft and offering advice. 

“I’d take those bigger stones first. Take them from the top, otherwise the whole thing’ll cave in on us. Come on, put your backs into it!”

“Who died and made you drill sergeant?” O’Connell asked, exasperated. 

Jonathan grinned a little. “Yes, well, you’ve got the idea. Chop chop!”

O’Connell growled and turned back to the task at hand. Chagrined, Jonathan ambled a little ways away. He was acting glib again, as he always did when he was worried and trying not to show it. Somewhere in this wretched place was Evie, hopefully giving her captors the worst possible time. Evie wasn’t one to go quietly, Jonathan knew, but even she might be cowed by Imhotep. Beni, on the other hand...Jonathan smirked to himself. 

It was as he stood there imagining Evie terrorizing O’Connell’s erstwhile friend that something glinting in the torchlight caught Jonathan’s eye. He raised the torch and moved closer, examining the hieroglyphs and carvings dug into the stone. A pharaoh--Seti, probably--stood supplicating Ra in his sun form, hands stretched out and up. Ra himself was filled with blue-grey bulbs. Jonathan frowned. His career may have lapsed of late, but he was educated enough in Egyptology to recognize this as unusual. Curious, he ran his fingers over the bulbs. Glass. Glass? He turned the little orb gently in place and with a soft pop it fell out into his hand. It was not heavy, but it was solid, and something inside it rattled. 

“I say,” Jonathan said, waving a hand at O’Connell and Ardeth Bey, “come and have a look at this--”

The glass shattered, a bug popping out--a scarab-- _ oh, shit-- _

Almost before he could blink, the beetle bit down hard on Jonathan's palm and burrowed into the incision. Jonathan screamed, as much in terror as in pain. O’Connell leaped around. 

“What, what is it?!”

“My arm, my arm!” Jonathan screeched, clawing at the scarab crawling just under the skin. It hurt like hell and it was moving fast. 

O’Connell grabbed him, yanking his shirt open at the shoulder, revealing the fast-moving bulge. He screeched almost as loudly as Jonathan. 

“Do something,  _ do something!” _ Jonathan howled, even as his companions seized him, immobilizing his arm, grasping his shoulder, trying not to let the scarab burrow any deeper. O’Connell pulled out a butterfly knife, swirled it open, and stabbed the beetle through Jonathan’s skin. Jonathan screamed again as O’Connell dug the scarab out and flicked it across the chamber. For a moment it lay dazed, then it surged back towards them and O’Connell pulled out his pistol and shot it dead. 

For a long moment the three men stood clutching each other, panting. Blood flowed freely down Jonathan’s shoulder, the skin on his arm bruising rapidly. 

“Good shot,” he said weakly, trying not to fall over. 

O’Connell looked at him, his face pale in the torchlight. “Where’d it come from?”

“There.” Jonathan pointed a shaking hand at the relief of Ra on the wall. “I thought it looked unusual and touched it.”

O’Connell and Ardeth leaned forward to look, then shuddered as one man and stepped back. 

“Well,” O’Connell said, rubbing the back of his neck. “I think we know now what killed the Warden.”

Jonathan did sink down then, sitting on a stone, putting his head between his knees.  _ Oh God. _ Memories of the Warden running screaming through the passage flashed through his mind.  _ Oh, God, oh God.  _

“ _ Fuck,”  _ O’Connell muttered, shaking his head. 

Ardeth Bey looked from one to the other. “You lost one companion to the scarabs?”

“Yeah,” O’Connell said, shortly. “We didn’t know it at the time, though.”

Ardeth Bey made a face and tore a length of fabric from his black robes. “Here, for a bandage. Will you attend to your bro--to Carnahan?”

“Yeah,” Rick said again, taking the fabric. “Can you finish the stones yourself?”

Ardeth Bey nodded and Rick grabbed up his pack, opening the outside pocket and fishing out the bottle of iodine he had swiped off of Evelyn’s table on their way out of the Fort Brydon apartment. Jonathan was white to the lips, and small wonder. Rick felt a bit sick, himself. 

“Do you still have your flask?”

Jonathan blinked. “Uh, yes, actually, excellent idea.”

He fished it out of his pocket as Rick swiped the stab wound down with iodine and wrapped the makeshift bandage around it. The wound was not deep, but it looked like it hurt like hell, and there were awful purple puckers all the way up Jonathan’s arm that Rick couldn’t do anything about. He swabbed more iodine over the bite on Jonathan’s palm and bandaged the hand up to the wrist. 

“You’ll live,” he said, tying off the knot and taking a nip from Jonathan’s proffered flask. 

“Are you in love with my sister?” Jonathan replied. 

Rick blinked. “Yes.”

Jonathan nodded. “Alright. Let’s go.”

Rick watched him get up and walk on unsteady but determined feet towards Ardeth Bey and the rock-filled doorway. Well, then. Time to go. 

*

On the other side of the lost city but closer by than any of them realized, Evelyn stood watching Beni struggle with removing stones in a similarly rubble-filled doorway. Imhotep stood nearby, looking bored and impatient. If only he hadn’t planted himself firmly in the center of the narrow passage, Evie might have been able to slip away. Blast and damn these wretched men, thwarting her every attempt at escape! She only hoped that Jonathan and Rick had survived the plane crash. It had been flying low and she hadn’t seen any flames when it went down, only that enormous plume of sand. She had been praying ever since. Gallipoli and Poziѐres. They had survived Gallipoli and Pozières. She had to believe they had survived the crash. 

Because Evelyn knew that if they didn’t come for her, no one would, and she would die at Imhotep’s hand. She was long passed being able to save herself. 

Beni succeeded at last in making a hole in the doorway large enough for them to pass through and Imhoptep led them on through a maze of passages and ultimately down a once-magnificent staircase into a mortuary temple. Evie gazed around her, taking it all in, her fear warring with the flicker of excitement at seeing a ruin of such splendor. If only the circumstances were different, what a coup such a find would be! This was a mortuary temple to rival Hatshepsut’s at Deir el-Bahari! Evie looked over at Imhotep, wondering if her obvious fascination would delay him a little, long enough for her men to come for her. Perhaps he would even see it as a last act of kindness to the condemned. But then she remembered the state of poor Mr. Burns, the ruthless way he had hunted and killed Mr. Henderson and Mr. Daniels, and she knew that such hope was futile. 

There was nothing to do but stand about and wait as Imhotep set about preparing for the ritual. He set the canopic jars out on the basalt altar and placed the Book of the Dead by them. Beni planted himself next to Evie, holding his gun in one hand to prevent her from escaping. Evie sighed and turned away from him. Terror flickered inside her, hope fading as they got closer and closer to the ritual. That long altar there was where a mummy was laid out before being put in its box. Evie looked at it and away. Somehow she knew that soon she would be laid out there, herself. 

A bang echoed through the chamber, at once distant and nearby. A gunshot. They all jumped. Evie’s heart leaped.  _ O’Connell. _

Annoyance flooded Imhotep’s face and he reached for one of the canopic jars. Pouring powder into his hand, he blew it towards a stele depicting priests paying conducting a sacred ritual. From behind the stone came a long, angry groan. Intrigued and horrified, Evie watched the stone priests crumble, becoming long-decayed bodies wrapped in bandages. Mummies. 

_ Scholarship really is lacking on practical magic _ , Evie thought as the mummies and Imhotep bowed to each other. If she lived through this, she was going to write a paper on the subject. Lord only knew she had enough information to begin with. The mummies shambled away on unsteady legs in the direction of Rick’s gunshot. Imhotep turned to Evie. 

“You really think they’re a match for living men?” she said to him, contemptuous, in her broken Ancient Egyptian. 

“Yes,” Imhotep replied and his hand shot out, gripping Evie around the throat.

His grip was tight, unyielding, cruel. Evie clawed at him but he did not let go, pressing tighter. She couldn’t breathe. Evie squirmed and struggled but couldn’t shake off Imhotep’s implacable grip. His face curved in a gloat; he tightened his fingers around Evie’s throat, pressing down on the veins.  _ She couldn’t breathe. _ Evie’s vision went white, then black; she felt as though she was falling, drowning, dying. And then nothing.

*

The passageway beyond the now-opened doorway was narrow, wide enough only for one man to walk at a time. Rick led the way, torch in one hand, gun bag in the other, his rifle slung over his shoulder. The passage was narrow, claustrophobic. God, Rick hated corridors like this. Ardeth Bey, behind him, had said that it wasn’t very long, but it didn’t really matter how long a place was when you didn’t know what lay ahead or if you would even be in time. _ Evelyn might be dead already, _ murmured a nasty little voice in the back of his head. Rick swallowed. She was alive. He had to believe that she was alive. 

And when he got her out of here, he was going to take her into his arms and hold her for a long, long time. 

The passage ended in an abrupt fissure in the rock. Rick tossed out his torch; the flame falling in a wide arc illuminated a kind of antechamber and, beyond that, a staircase. There was no sound at all. No one there. Rick tossed out his gun back and climbed down after it, rifle at the ready. He had been in too many battles not to be wary. 

Behind him, Ardeth Bey and Jonathan climbed down from the passage. Walking on silent feet and with guns raised, they approached the staircase. All before them was darkness, but for a smudge of light high up on the wall. Rick looked at it. A mirror. A mirror?  _ It’s an ancient Egyptian trick, _ he remembered Evelyn saying that first day at Hamunaptra. A light trick, the beams passed mirror to mirror--a genius, that Evelyn. Rick took a pistol from its holster and took careful aim. He needed to turn the mirror, not break it.  _ Steady, O’Connell, steady... _

_ Bang. _ The bullet glanced off the edge of the mirror, knocking it backwards and up towards. Light flooded the chamber, branching from mirror to mirror, turning everything a bright warm gold. Rick blinked away the dazzle. It wasn’t just the refracted sunlight that was gold. The light glanced off of countless precious objects; statues, ushabtis, piles of furniture and jewelry and decor. Seti’s treasure chamber. 

For a long moment, the three men boggled. Even Ardeth Bey looked astonished by the riches. Jonathan was making small incoherent noises.

“Do you see--”

“Yes.”

“Can you believe--”

“Yes.”

“Can we just--”

“No,” Rick said, and started down the staircase. “Not until we’ve got Evelyn and have killed that guy.”

“I know, I just…” Jonathan’s voice trailed off. 

“You’re an archaeologist. I get it,” Rick began. Hell,  _ he _ wanted to have a look around when all of this was over. Surely Ardeth Bey wouldn’t protest, especially if they succeeded in laying down Imhotep. Evelyn was going to lose her damn mind when she saw all this stuff. 

They made their way through the treasure chamber, Rick shaking his head. All of this stuff, just sitting here, doing nothing. When Rick thought about all the hungry people in Cairo, the orphaned kids scrabbling for a few pennies so they could fill their bellies and survive just one more day, it made his blood boil. The wealth of Egypt, and what good was any of it doing? 

A strange, creaky gurgling broke through Rick’s dark thoughts. As one man, he and Jonathan and Ardeth Bey whipped around. 

Hands were popping out of the ground, dry, decrepit, mummified hands. Mummies broke through the sand, two, four, five, eight of them. 

“Who the hell are these guys?” Rick asked. 

Ardeth Bey sounded resigned. “Priests. Imhotep’s priests.”

“Okay, then.” And Rick opened fire. 

The nice thing about guns was that they did have one hell of an effect on the walking dead. The mummies screeched and fell back as bits of them were blown away, but they did not stop walking. Jonathan fired off the last of the bullets in his derringer--really, he was going to have to buy a better gun--and snatched the pistols from O’Connell’s shoulder holsters. They fell back, retreating down the chamber towards the doors on the far end. The firefight was loud and chaotic; the shambling corpses just kept coming, and the worst part was that nothing that was happening was remotely as awful as what Jonathan had seen and done in the trenches.

Rick seized the back of his shirt and dragged him away. 

“Let’s go, come on!” 

Jonathan flung a pistol at one of the undead priests, snatched up his torch, and led the way out of the treasure chamber and down the next passage. Behind him, O’Connell and Ardeth Bey kept up a steady spray of bullets as they ran.  _ Horus, we have to find Horus. _ And there he was, at the top of a long, narrow room that had three doorways opening off of it. Jonathan whooped as his torch lit up the tumbled-down statue. 

“Hello, Horus, old boy!”

He stuck his torch in a niche and ran around, examining it. There had to be a compartment here somewhere. Hurry, hurry, hurry. Out of the corner of his eye, Jonathan saw O’Connell toss Ardeth Bey his rifle and pull a stick of dynamite out of his bag. 

“Time to close the door!”

Jonathan dropped to his knees behind the statue and grabbed hold of Ardeth Bey and O’Connell as they rocketed into place beside him. The dynamite exploded, blowing up the doorway and taking the mummies with it, and for a moment Jonathan was at Pozières again, shells falling around him, killing them. He clutched his ears.  _ No. No. We’re in Egypt. We have to save Evie. _ Now was not the time to break down. 

“You okay?” O’Connell shouted. 

Jonathan shook his head, trying to hide his sudden weakness by scrambling about the base of the stature. “Look for a loose panel, something that could be removed. It’ll be hidden behind it.”

They found the compartment pretty quickly, all things considered, behind a board directly under the statue’s feet. Jonathan took O’Connell’s knife and slid it into the crack between wood and stone at the top, easing the ancient panel forward and setting it aside as it came out into his hand. Another career-making find ruined; what ought to have been a proud and solemn moment marred by the mummies that Ardeth Bey kept shooting down. How many of the wretches were there? 

“You got it?” O’Connell asked as Jonathan reached a cautious hand into the hole and felt around for the book he prayed was inside. 

“I think so,” Jonathan said. “There’s a box in here--”

He broke off as hands shot out of the sand at their feet and both he and O’Connell leaped backwards. O’Connell wasn’t fast enough; the hands seized the gun bag still slung around his shoulders and pulled it down. Rick went down yelling, scrabbling for his knife. Jonathan snatched it up and leaped at him; a tug and a slice and the strap was cut and O’Connell was rolling away from the hole, swearing. He snatched for his bag, but it was gone, only a couple of sticks of dynamite coming away in his hands. From underground came a horrible rending sound.

“You alright?” Jonathan asked. 

“Yeah,” Rick panted. “Thanks.”

“No problem.” Jonathan reached back into the base of the statue, dragging at the box inside. It was ridiculously heavy--well, the Book of Amun Ra was said to be made of solid gold. Jonathan slid the lid off, pushed aside ancient wrappings. 

“The Book of Amun-Ra,” he said, relieved. 

“This is it?”

“Yes.” 

Jonathan dragged it up out of the box, hefting it into his arms. Behind them, Ardeth Bey fired shot after shot into the corridor, until with a click the rifle fell silent: no more bullets, and all of their ammunition was lost. He turned to them. 

“Save the girl. Kill the creature.” And with a yell, he charged off into the corridor, clubbing at the mummified priests with the rifle. 

Rick leaped to his feet, horror flooding him. Ardeth Bey was surrounded and moving fast; they couldn’t get to him in time to save him. 

“What are you waiting for? Go!” he bellowed, and vanished around a corner. 

“ _ Damn _ it!” Rick shouted, diving for their last remaining stick of dynamite. “I hate heroics!”

He lit the fuse and flung it at the doorway, not seeing the incredulous look on Jonathan’s face as he did so. They dived for cover as the doorway caved in. Another companion lost. 

“You okay?” he shouted at Jonathan. He was  _ not _ going to lose either of the Carnahans.

“Yes,” Jonathan replied, staggering to his feet under the Golden Book’s weight. 

They charged off through the last remaining doorway, both praying that it would lead them to Evelyn. They had no more weapons, just the Golden Book and hope. Moving quickly, they ran deeper into the Lost City, following the long tunnel until _ \--at last-- _ it opened up into a cavernous room: the mortuary temple. Rick and Jonathan slid to a halt, transfixed with horror, at the top of an ornate and ruined staircase. 

*

Evelyn opened her eyes slowly. Her throat hurt abominably, and her head. But she could breathe. She sucked in lungfuls of hot, stale air and reached to brush her face, only she couldn’t. Her arms were stuck. Stuck? Evie turned her head. Manacles. She was lying on her back, manacled at the wrists and, she found, the ankles. Manacled to the altar. 

Suddenly Evie was wide awake, adrenaline surging through her. She was chained to the altar, and that was a corpse laid out next to her, and that was Imhotep chanting incantations, and more of the mummified priests surrounding him, bowing and supplicating as he did so. The air was thick; from a pool at the far side of the temple rose a roiling purple-grey shape: a woman’s soul, rising up into the air and approaching the altar, hovering over her. Evie gave an almighty screech, her courage gone. 

“ _ O’Connell!” _ she howled.  _ “Jonathan!” _

Imhotep smiled at her. “With your death, Anck-sun-namun will live,” he said, raising his knife, and Evie realized that he was going to kill her and give that soul her body. She screamed again, wailing for her brother. And, improbably, he answered. 

“I found it, Evie!” Jonathan screamed from the top of the temple staircase. _ “I found it!”  _

  
  


Author's Note: Okay, I have to apologize for my six week break from updating this series. Action scenes are hard to write, y'all. But! Here it is, and hopefully the next story will come quickly. I hope you like this story! Please let me know what you think in the comments and, as ever, thanks so much for reading. 


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